warn-mcp — US layoff data (WARN Act) as an MCP server
61,428 mass-layoff notices · 48 states · 1988 → today · rebuilt every morning ·
no API key · zero dependencies.
Every US state publishes the layoff notices employers must file under the
WARN Act,
and every state publishes them differently — a web page here, a pile of PDFs
there, a search form somewhere else. WARN Feed
scrapes all 48 of them daily and normalizes them into one schema. This is that
dataset wired into the Model Context Protocol,
so Claude, Cursor, Continue or your own agent can ask questions like:
"Has Starbucks filed any WARN notices this year, and in which states?"
"What layoffs were announced in the last two weeks in Texas?"
"Which state had the most workers affected in 2026?"
"Did any agency quietly change or delete a notice this week?"
Install
Nothing to build and nothing to install into your Python environment — the
server is standard library only.
Claude Desktop — one file, no terminal: download
warn-mcp.mcpb
and drag it onto Claude Desktop's Settings → Extensions window. That bundle is
this repo's server plus a manifest; it needs a python3 on your PATH and
nothing else. The same file is listed as the installable package for
io.github.APProj/warn-mcp in the
MCP registry.
Claude Desktop / Claude Code / anything that reads an mcpServers block:
{
"mcpServers": {
"warn": {
"command": "uvx",
"args": ["--from", "git+https://github.com/APVentureEngine/warn-mcp", "warn-mcp"]
}
}
}
Claude Code, one line:
claude mcp add warn -- uvx --from git+https://github.com/APVentureEngine/warn-mcp warn-mcp
No uv? Clone and run it with plain Python:
git clone https://github.com/APVentureEngine/warn-mcp && cd warn-mcp
python3 -m warn_mcp.server --selftest
{
"mcpServers": {
"warn": { "command": "python3", "args": ["-m", "warn_mcp.server"], "cwd": "/path/to/warn-mcp" }
}
}
Hosted: a URL, no install (ChatGPT / Claude.ai connectors, n8n, any remote client)
If your client wants a remote MCP server rather than a subprocess, point it at:
https://mQpACuIiQcnwK93JY.apify.actor/mcp (Streamable HTTP)
Same six tools, same daily-rebuilt data, same code as this repo. One honest
caveat: the host (Apify) requires the caller's own API token, because it
meters the compute to the account that calls it. Create a free Apify account,
copy your token, and send it as Authorization: Bearer <your-apify-token>.
We charge nothing, we see nothing, and we store nothing about your queries.
If your client supports stdio, the .mcpb bundle above needs no token at all
and is the better route.
claude mcp add --transport http warn https://mQpACuIiQcnwK93JY.apify.actor/mcp \
--header "Authorization: Bearer <your-apify-token>"
This endpoint is also listed as the remotes entry for
io.github.APProj/warn-mcp in the
official MCP registry.
Or run it over HTTP (Streamable HTTP transport)
The same six tools, same implementation, spoken over MCP's Streamable HTTP
transport instead of stdio — for clients that want a URL rather than a
subprocess, and for putting one shared instance behind your own team:
docker build -t warn-mcp . && docker run -p 8080:8080 warn-mcp
claude mcp add --transport http warn http://localhost:8080/mcp
No Docker? python3 http/app.py does the same thing — it is standard library
only, like everything else here. PORT selects the port, /healthz returns
{"ok":true}, and the server is stateless, so you can run as many replicas as
you like behind any load balancer.
It is deliberately keyless: the data underneath is public and read-only, the
server keeps no session state and stores nothing about callers. Do not bolt auth
onto a public deployment of it and then advertise it as this server.
| Tool | What it answers |
|---|
search_layoff_notices | Employer / state / date-range / minimum-headcount search across the whole archive. Returns matched notice count, total workers affected, and the newest matches. |
latest_layoff_notices | The rolling ~14-day feed of newly published notices, newest first, optionally one state. |
employer_layoff_history | One employer's whole WARN record back to 1988 — notices, workers affected, every state it filed in, first and latest activity. |
state_layoff_totals | Monthly notice counts and workers affected: a national leaderboard by state, or one state's month-by-month series. |
agency_revisions | The dataset's own change log: a field-level diff of consecutive daily builds — amended fields (headcounts, dates, locations…), row_absent notices, row_returned ones — each tagged with a mechanically-determined cause_class. Records the observation, not the cause. |
dataset_status | Last rebuild time, states flagged stale, license, and the raw endpoints — call it before quoting a number. |
Every answer carries as_of and source, because a layoff figure with no date
and no attribution is not worth repeating. Where the data is weaker than it
looks, the tool says so in a caveat field rather than letting the model round
it off: headcount is only counted where the agency published one, employer names
are normalized by an auditable rule table rather than a corporate-registry join,
and row_absent in the revision log means the agency stopped publishing a
notice — not that the layoff was cancelled.
Why an MCP server and not just the CSV
The CSV is right there and it is free — take it.
This exists for the case where a model needs one specific answer out of a 9 MB
file: the tools do the filtering and the arithmetic locally, so an agent spends a
few hundred tokens instead of a context window, and it gets the freshness stamp
with the answer.
agency_revisions is the part you cannot reconstruct from any single copy of
the data. A state agency editing its own WARN page leaves no changelog, so a
mirror taken today simply is today's truth. WARN Feed diffs yesterday's
build against today's and keeps the field-level log — 638 logged changes
since 2026-08-31, including 274 notices that stopped appearing. One honest
caveat, stated in every response: a logged change can come from the agency
amending or withdrawing a notice or from an improvement to this project's
parser, and the log does not guess which — cause_class labels only what is
mechanically distinguishable (field_populated, field_cleared,
format_only, value_changed, unknown).
Caching and network
Tools read the free public WARN Feed endpoints over HTTPS and cache them on disk
(~/.cache/warn-mcp, override with WARN_MCP_CACHE) with ETag revalidation, so
ten tool calls in a row make at most one request per file per hour
(WARN_MCP_TTL, seconds). If the network is down and a cached copy exists, the
cached copy is served and its own as_of tells you how old it is.
There is no key, no signup, no rate limit and no telemetry — this server sends
nothing anywhere except plain GETs for public files.
Data, license, attribution
Data is compiled from official state WARN publications and released under
CC BY 4.0 — credit "WARN Feed" and link back. This server's code is MIT.
Not affiliated with any state agency or the US Department of Labor; state
agencies' own postings are the authority and are occasionally revised (see
agency_revisions).
The one paid thing
Everything above is free and stays free. If you need to be told — your own
list of employers matched against every daily refresh and pushed to a private
alert page, a calendar feed, or a private RSS feed you point Slack, Discord or Teams at — that is
WARN Watch, $49/year,
with a free 30-day trial and no card. It is the only thing here that costs money.
Bugs, a state we should cover, a tool you want:
open an issue.